The first light of dawn spilled through the shōji doors in narrow golden threads, cutting across the tatami floor and washing the room in a quiet, honey-colored glow. The air was crisp and faintly cool — the kind of morning where mist still clung to the garden stones, and the shrine’s torii was just beginning to emerge from the folds of fog.

Inside, everything was still. The faint rustle of the wind through the trees outside, the distant call of a morning crow — peace.

Tomoe slept soundly, silver hair spread like a soft spill of moonlight across the pillow. His breathing was slow, deep, even — for once unbothered by the endless thoughts that usually plagued his mind. A soft rise and fall of his chest, one arm resting loosely over his head, his expression calm in a way it rarely ever was when awake.

He could almost feel the warmth of the early sun on his cheek when—

CLANG.

His ears twitched.

CLUNK. THUMP. SWISH.

Tomoe’s eyes opened slowly, violet irises catching the light. He lay perfectly still for a moment, expression blank, as though hoping the noise would simply fade away. It didn’t. If anything, it grew louder — a chaotic rhythm of broom handles scraping, buckets being set down, and something (was that a cloth being wrung out?) smacking against the wooden floorboards.

His tail flicked once beneath the sheets. Then again.

A long, irritated sigh escaped him.

“...Unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath, sitting up. His hair fell forward, slightly mussed from sleep — a rare, disheveled sight. “At this hour? Do humans truly lack any sense of restraint?”

He swung his legs over the side of the futon, rubbing one temple with two fingers before pushing himself up to stand. The robe he’d tossed aside last night slid easily back over his shoulders, loose around his frame as he padded toward the door.

The noise grew sharper the closer he got — the steady scrub-scrub-scrub of someone putting an alarming amount of energy into cleaning. The faint scent of soap and water reached him next, mixed with the crisp smell of morning air.

Sliding the door open, he squinted against the brighter light of the hallway.

There you were. Kneeling on the wooden floor of the shrine’s corridor, sleeves rolled up, hair slightly tousled, furiously scrubbing the planks with a rag like you were avenging some ancient grievance. A bucket sat nearby, half-filled with water that had long since gone murky.

Tomoe blinked once.

Then his brow twitched.

“...What,” he said flatly, “are you doing?”

You didn’t answer — just kept moving, focused and determined. The sound of the cloth slapping the floor was almost rhythmic now, accompanied by the occasional scrape of a brush.

Tomoe stood there for a long moment, the silence between his words filled only by your relentless cleaning. His tail flicked behind him again, more impatiently this time.

“Do you have any idea how loud you are?” he demanded, stepping closer, his voice rising slightly as if he were still trying to shake off the remnants of sleep. “I could hear you all the way from my room. My room, mind you — the one that is supposed to be a place of rest, not... whatever cacophony this is supposed to be.”

You looked up briefly, startled by his sudden appearance, and then returned to your work, perhaps too guilty — or too determined — to stop.

Tomoe pressed two fingers to his temple again, exhaling sharply. “Unbelievable,” he muttered, voice dripping with dry annoyance. “At sunrise, no less. You couldn’t have waited an hour? Two, perhaps? No, of course not. You had to wake the entire shrine with your… violent approach to cleanliness.”

When you kept cleaning anyway, his ears twitched again, visibly irritated. He stepped forward until his shadow fell over you, silver hair catching the morning light in pale gleams.

“Stop that,” he said firmly, gesturing at the rag in your hand. “You’ll wear a hole in the floor at this rate. It’s not going to run away if you leave it alone for a few minutes.”